


Our Burn and Promise

by writerdragonfly



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, M/M, Pining, Post Season 5
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-03
Updated: 2018-03-03
Packaged: 2019-03-26 14:39:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,141
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13859835
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/writerdragonfly/pseuds/writerdragonfly
Summary: “We exist in two realities,” he says, his voice rough around the words, “do you know what that means?”“Aren’t there like, a billion realities though?”“That’s not what I meant,” he says, no hesitation, “I’m not talking about parallel worlds. I’m talking about you and I.”





	Our Burn and Promise

**Author's Note:**

> I actually started this one before the other fic, but then a text!fic bug got me and I had to start that one. It didn't require much adjustment to make this compliant with the new season, so I went ahead and did that. As such, spoilers abound.
> 
> I suspect this will be between three and five chapters in total, and it's my hope to have an average chapter length of 1.5-2k, which this first chapter doesn't actually get up to.

* * *

# ONE

 

“To see a world in a grain of sand

And a heaven in a wild flower,

Hold infinity in the palm of your hand,

And eternity in an hour.”

 

-William Blake

 

* * *

 

 

##  _Infinity_

It’s early in the evening on whatever planet they’re on, the sky shades of indigo and violet just past the setting of the local sun. The wind is slight, just enough to ruffle his hair and occasionally bristle against his skin to raise gooseflesh on the surface of it. It isn’t that it’s cold, not really. He’d slid out of layers and slipped off his shoes as he walked, warm from the run that brought him here, dropping clothes along the vibrant red grass and onto the beach.

 

The beach itself is a dark expanse of cool, lavender sand and the soft splashing of the tide. His feet are bare, toes curled into the slowly dampening sand, but his arms—crossed atop his knees—are still wrapped in steadily more discolored bandages.

 

It is quiet, except for the ocean. He knows if he listened harder he could hear his girl and the faint, steady hum of the Castle. He doesn’t listen though.

 

Listening won’t bring _him_ back. He isn’t sure anything would bring  _him_ back.

 

With a sigh, he uncrosses, leans until his back slaps against the sand with a cloud of dust. It leaves his arms with a twinge of pain, but other than a half-swallowed grunt, he doesn’t let it show.

 

He looks straight up even though he knows it’ll hurt, a pang of homesickness that feels like a little weight in his chest. These aren’t his stars. The sky isn’t dark enough to see them all, but even through the faint haze of dark violet, he knows, can see for sure that they’re not his stars.

 

They’re beautiful, tiny diamond pinpricks scattered like freckles across the sky. They’re beautiful, but they’re not right. Not his.

 

Could _he_ even see these same stars right now?

 

Sometimes, he likes to imagine that at least one of them is safe at home, back on Earth. Back where there wasn’t an intergalactic conquistador destroying or enslaving whatever life existed before them.

 

Selfishly, he likes to imagine that he’s missed. That back on Earth, people are missing him as much as he’s missing them, aching for them.

 

The tide trickles in at his feet, violet-colored water beginning to pool at his ankles. It’s warm--warmer than Earth--but not unbearably so. His arms have begun to itch, sand creeping in between the layers of gauze and sticking to the electric blue paste and thick, half-dried blood underneath.

 

It takes a little more effort than usual to lift his right arm up, but he manages it. He presses his middle and ring finger down but leaves the rest out and open. _I love you_ , it says and he thinks.

 

The constellation above his two folded fingers looks like a lemniscate. Stars in the shape of infinity.

 

Lance closes his eyes, lets his hand fall back down to rest on his chest, and breathes in, deep and hard.

 

_Keith,_ he thinks, _wherever you are, can you see our infinity?_

 

There isn’t an answer. Lance hadn’t really expected one anyway.

 

##  _Eternity_

 

_You cannot_ _leave_ , he remembers, _you cannot return._

 

It wasn’t like he wanted to leave, not exactly. He had chosen this, chosen to join the Blade.

 

_Sometimes, though, he wondered if he had any other choice at all._

 

But sometimes, sometimes he missed them all so much it felt like fire in his chest and a thick and heavy weight in his stomach.

 

They were his family.

 

He hadn’t really understood what that was until he’d given up the helm of Voltron back to Shiro, retreated into the shadows of the Blade of Marmora and the silence of their purpose.

 

He hadn’t realized that the silence he had craved wasn’t what he wanted anymore until he had it, either.

 

He had always been alone. Growing up, it had just been him and his dad. And then, for a long time, just him. He was good with silence.

 

And then Shiro. Pidge and Hunk, Allura and Coran.

 

And Lance.

 

Lance, who never shut up unless it was _important_ , Lance who made something in Keith light up in ways that made no sense to him at all.

 

Lance who had supported him wholeheartedly when he had led them, for however brief it had been.

 

Now, standing here in the tiny bedroom he’d been allocated with the Blade of Marmora, knowing that half the base away there was a woman who claimed to his mother.

 

He didn’t know what he was supposed to feel, what he was supposed to do. He had come to the Blade with some degree of hope that he could learn about her. He expected to someday discover she had died, perhaps that she had died when he was small and that she hadn’t _left him_ after all.

 

He didn’t know if this was better, that she returned to her duty as a Blade instead of her duty as a mother. He knew what it was like to need to do something, to fight for those who couldn’t. He knew what it was like to _need_ more than anything else and he didn’t, he didn’t know what he was supposed to feel now.

  
He understood her and couldn’t at the same damn time.

 

He wanted his team, his real family, back. He wanted to be back on solid ground where he could drop _duty_ for a single fucking minute and  _react_.

 

He wanted Shiro’s advice and Allura’s strength and Coran’s mettle and Hunk’s cooking and Pidge’s steady presence.

 

He wanted _Lance_ , which still made something inside him thrum with annoyance and butterflies at the same time.

 

Keith didn’t regret going to the Blade of Marmora, but sometimes it felt like it would be forever until he could truly relax.

 

Sometimes, he just wanted to be eighteen years old and joking around with his team in the expanse of time between battle and provocateur.

 

With a shuddering release of breath he hadn’t realized he’d been holding, Keith escapes from his room and runs.

 

He runs, the steady pound of his feet down grey halls until he reaches far enough away to see outside.

 

They’re not his stars, not out here. They’re a different set of constellations in a different galaxy, an immeasurable distance away from the stars he’d grown up under.

 

Still, he looks out the window, presses his palm against the glass as if he can feel home and as if home could feel him looking.

 

There was probably an entire galaxy between him and his team, between him and Lance.

 

But still, a part of him wondered, deep inside his chest, _Lance_ , _can you see through this eternity to me?_


End file.
